Snoop (real name: Calvin Cordozar Broadus) had just performed a concert in the Swedish city of Uppsala when police suspected he might have been under the influence of narcotics. It’s unclear whether or not Snoop was driving, but it doesn’t matter: under Swedish law, anyone suspected of being under the influence of drugs can be detained and forced to take a urine test.

And that’s exactly what happened to Snoop: cops put him into the back of a police car and brought him to the station.

A bizarre maneuver to fend off Russian subs using “gay propaganda” is being employed by the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, the world’s oldest peace organization and three-time Nobel Peace Prizewinner, as reported by the Moscow Times:

A Swedish peace group has devised a unique way of fending off unwanted naval intrusions after reports of Russian submarines entering the country’s territorial waters last year — erecting a device that taps out in Morse code: “This way if you are gay.”

The broadcasting device, which has been lowered into the sea near Stockholm, is also covered by a flashing neon sign that shows a sailor gyrating back and forth in nothing but skimpy pants, according to a video published last week by The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, the group behind the move .

“Welcome to Sweden, gay since 1944” reads the neon sign in English. Sweden decriminalized homosexuality 71 years ago, while Russia recently banned the promotion of “gay propaganda” to minors in what critics say represents a crackdown on LGBT rights.

Sweden’s military is working on two new observations that could be evidence of suspected “foreign underwater activity” near the country’s capital, a senior naval officer says.

Swedish forces have been scouring the sea off Stockholm since Friday, after what the military called three credible reports of activity by foreign submarines or divers using an underwater vehicle.

The vessels were unidentified, but during the 1980s the Swedish navy from time to time hunted suspected Soviet submarines in its waters.

“Today, I can also report that there have been two further observations which were made by members of the public that are interesting enough to require further follow-up work,” Admiral Anders Grenstad told reporters.

He would not give further details about what kind of new sightings had been made, but said they were being assessed and were not yet considered as credible as the three made earlier.

This is probably more helpful than the current MPAA rating system in use here. Via the Washington Post:

Four Swedish movie theaters touched off a heated debate across Stockholm last month — and in the English-language media this morning — with the announcement that they plan to begin publicly labeling films that pass the so-called “Bechdel test.” The metric gauges whether a film meets a bare minimum standard for developed female characters.

Promoters are encouraging theaters to stamp its “A” logo on the movie posters and pre-roll screens of any film that (1) has at least two female characters who (2) talk to each other (3) about something other than men. A surprisingly high proportion of films fail this test.

In the weeks since, it has been covered in a dozen newspaper columns and earning the endorsements of Equalisters, Women in Television and Film and a popular cable movie channel and, controversially, the blessing of Anna Serner, who presides over Sweden’s state-funded film institute.

OK conspiracy theorists, why is the electricity company in Sweden really dosing citizens with UV light? From Reuters:

Commuters in the northern Swedish town of Umea are being treated to ultra-violet light therapy as the long, dark winter for which the Nordic state is renowned draws in.
Energy company Umea Energi has decided to install ultra-violet lights at about 30 bus stops for people, which will be in place for the next three weeks.
"This is so people can get a little energy kick as they are waiting," said Umea Energi marketing chief Anna Norrgard. Umea is about 600 km north of capital city Stockholm...

Would you dare to tamper with the burial chamber of the mythic King Ale the Strong? Via Live Science:

A 5,500-year-old tomb possibly belonging to a Stone Age chieftain has been unearthed at a megalithic monument in the shape of a ship called the Ale’s Stenar (Ale’s Stones). The tomb, in Sweden, was likely robbed of stones to build the Viking-era ship monument.

Perched on a seaside cliff in the village of Kåseberga stands the Ales Stenar, also called Ale’s Stones, 59 massive boulders arranged in the 220-foot (67-meter)-long outline of a ship. Most researchers believe the 1,400-year-old ship structure is a burial monument built toward the end of Sweden’s Iron Age. Local legend has it that the mythic King Ale lies beneath the site.

Your memories of lunch room cafeterias, like mine, probably revolve around mass produced “beef” patties, unnatural-looking vegetables in industrial steam trays, and…um….sturdy looking women hefting ladles that could double as truncheons. Lunch time was something you endured rather than enjoyed. (I still remember something that they called a “Mexican Pizza” that would probably be considered a culinary hate crime today…) You’re probably glad those days are long over, but for a group of kids in Falun, Sweden, they are only now beginning.

School cafeteria Head Chef Annika Eriksson is guilty of nothing but making sure that her little customers had the very best meal that she could provide: fresh-made bread, wide selections of vegetables, and meats of all sorts. Sadly, no good deed goes unpunished, and now school district officials have instructed Eriksson to stop cooking her scrumptious spreads in favor of a district-wide meal plan.… Read the rest

If you had the keys to your country's Twitter account, what would you say?
Well, Sonja Abrahamsson has caused a bit of a stir with her tweets about Jews from the @Sweden handle.
This week's vox populi via @Sweden from Abrahamsson has delved into such curiosities as "Whats the fuzz with jews. You can't even see if a person is a jew," without intimate examination, she wrote in more explicit terms.
As you can imagine, her tweets have caught some flack and attention. Abrahamsson, who describes herself as "a 27-year old womanlike human being from northern Sweden," is part of a government experiment entrusting its @Sweden national Twitter account to a new citizen every week...

The newly-recognized Kopimist religion, based in Sweden, views file sharing as the ultimate purpose of modern life. In striking fashion, the faith united two lovebirds earlier this month:

The first kopimist wedding took place this weekend in Belgrade at the Share conference. A woman from Romania and a man from Italy have engaged in a holy Kopimist act. The missionary leader of the Church of Kopimism, Isak, attended as a witness during the wedding.

We are very happy today. Love is all about sharing. A married couple share everything with each other. Hopefully, they will copy and remix some DNA-cells and create a new human being. That is the spirit of Kopimism. Feel the love and share that information. Copy all of its holiness.

If the language and words we use determine the frameworks within which we think, the newest edition to Swedish may have an enlightening effect. Slate explains:

For many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal, but gender-neutral. What many gender-neutral activists are after is a society that entirely erases traditional gender roles and stereotypes at even the most mundane levels.

Earlier this month, the movement reached a milestone: Just days after International Women’s Day, a new pronoun, ‘hen’ (pronounced like the bird in English), was added to the country’s National Encyclopedia. The entry defines hen as a “proposed gender-neutral personal pronoun instead of he [han in Swedish] and she [hon].” The announcement came amid heated debate that has been raging in Swedish newspaper columns and TV studios and on parenting blogs and feminist websites. It was sparked by the publication of Sweden’s first ever gender-neutral children’s book, Kivi och Monsterhund.